Rob Thurman - Blackout

I’d gotten the rundown before last night’s relapse on the body count, but it didn’t hurt to double-check when at a moment’s notice I might forget how to wipe my own ass. The count stood at twenty vamps, Wolves, incubi, succubi, all found dead or reported missing by their pack or loved one … er … creature; their significant supernatural other. The dead bodies were found as little more than husks, autumn leaves ready to fly away on a fall breeze. They were dried up and drained of all life, still recognizable, but what had animated their body was gone. Creatures, supernatural or not, were basically batteries. It was that biological energy that got Ammut’s engines revving.

Where they were found I marked with a circle with X s for eyes and a frown with a tongue hanging out. “Okay, what about the missing ones?” For those I put question marks. We ended up with eight dead bodies and twelve missing ones. “Goodfellow said the spider’s venom would make whatever it bit forget everything, including how to breathe.” I’d gotten a reduced dose, he’d said. It bit something before me or I’d be dead now. “How does Ammut get life force out of dead things?”

“That’s only with humans, which is why Ammut doesn’t eat humans,” Niko answered. “Their life force isn’t half as powerful as that of the supernatural. If the spiders bite the supernatural creatures, it paralyzes them, but they’re still alive to be wrapped up in cocoons and brought back to Ammut.”

I turned the map from one side to the other and then upside down, Niko’s prayer beads tumbling to the mat. First, the dead, then the missing, and then over again. It was plain as day. “Huh. Look at that. Damn, we were five kinds of stupid.” I gave a small smile, thinking about how Miss Terrwyn said that at least ten times a day at the diner. Down-to-earth and smarter by a mile than we badass monster killers were. I was glad I hadn’t forgotten her when I woke up this morning. “Yeah, we were five kinds of stupid all right.”

Niko frowned as if he’d never heard that particular insult aimed at him before. Intellectual vanity again. “What do you mean?”

“Forget Ammut being at the canal. She was only there to wipe out the council. That was personal. Look at everything else.” I pointed at eight different spots. “I have amnesia, but I can read a map and I know if you live around Central Park, you’re rich. Ammut took those victims herself. Walked into some fancy building with fancy security, went right upstairs, and ate herself some dinner.” Next I pointed at the question marks. “And I know that these places aren’t near parks, aren’t fancy, and that last one is near a waste treatment plant.” As I said, I could read a damn map. “Why does Ammut need her spiders when she can go where most people could never get in? Think about it. Why send them there when she can go anywhere?” I smirked, full of myself that I’d seen what everyone else had missed. I was hot shit all right. Amnesia boy takes the lead. “Because she’s a snob.”

Niko grabbed the map and scrutinized it. “But if that’s true, then that means—”

“It means she doesn’t want to get her Manolo what-chamacallits dirty. It means she probably gets her hair and nails done at whatever expensive champagne-swilling place your vampire lady friend does. She can look human when she wants, same as most of your … our friends out there. Hell, Promise and she might even know each other.” Ammut wasn’t some lion-headed, alligator-jawed, hippopotamus-assed Egyptian goddess she’d been in the picture Goodfellow had drawn on a bar napkin. She was a rich Park Avenue bitch who could afford a personal trainer to make sure her ass stayed well below hippo size.

And occasionally she turned into a giant slithery snake creature in a canal, but we all had bad hair days. At least chicks did, right? I hadn’t been that upset with my hair even with spider goop in it.

“We thought she sent the spiders to the easier locations because they’re not particularly intelligent and that she kept the more difficult locations for herself,” Niko murmured, shaking his head in self-recrimination.

“Nope. Stuck-up bitch.” I’d seen one or two come through the diner in the Landing when I’d been there. Passing through to Charleston and damn near horrified that the diner was the only place to eat in town. Here I might not get up close and personal with those kinds of people, and Niko’s friend Promise didn’t rub her wealth in anyone’s face. Those at the diner, though, were bitches through and through. They’d sent the silverware back four times, the tea twice, the food once—not that they ate more than a bite of the second serving, and left a dollar tip. I heard one say as she left with her party that she could feel the grease in the air clogging up her fucking immaculate pores. It’d made my day that I’d washed in the toilet the last two forks I’d given them. I hoped they’d tasted Comet all the way to Charleston.

That made me think. The relapse definitely only went back a day, because those things were perfectly clear. A small relapse, which was good. It meant Niko would get back what he needed, and I’d get back who I was.

“With this, we don’t need to visit Mickey, and that is a huge plus as he lives in a garbage dump.” Niko began to fold the map up with a brisk decisive emotion. “Cal, that’s something. I’m proud of you.”

“What? Was I that stupid when I had all of my memory?” I demanded, folding my arms and trying to look offended, but I couldn’t lose the grin. Hell, I was proud of myself, and who didn’t like feeling smug? If they said they didn’t, they were big, fat liars.

“No, You’ve always been smart. However, when it comes to laziness, you’re a genius, Nobel league. You prefer to wait for Goodfellow or me to do the boring research. Then you turn off the cartoons and shoot at whatever we find,” he said dryly.

I had no desire to clean up my room, so, nope, the laziness hadn’t changed. I was about to point that out when Niko whipped his head around and looked up.

Like he hadn’t last time … in the mummy’s lair . Sheep being sheep. But even sheep can learn.

“Get your weapons. Now .”

He was good. I could barely see the motion in the shadows where the outer wall met the ceiling two stories up when I knew to look for it. But I could smell them now that I knew they were there and bothered to take a whiff. “Seriously?” I groaned. “Again? Christ, the goddamn Hatfields and McCoys didn’t hold grudges this long.”

But apparently spiders did.

It was storming outside and had been all morning, at least the two hours of it that it had taken me to drive Niko nuts; otherwise they probably would’ve waited until night. Ammut didn’t want the neighbors calling 911 and every exterminator in the city on her pets. The spiders scuttled down the walls; all of them were bigger than the beagle-sized one from the previous night. I grabbed for my holster I’d hung on the wall in the training area. Yanking the Eagle from one side and the Glock from the other, I fired as one jumped from the wall to the breakfast bar. Flung to the floor, it spasmed, legs curling in, flailing out, and then curling back in as greenish black slime pooled around it. That part of it didn’t look much different from what I’d seen Niko drink yesterday for supper. “If they keep coming after me to avenge their spider buddies, then I have to keep killing more of them, and if I kill more of them, then even fucking more will come. I’ll have every goddamn spider in the world after my ass.”

I shot another one that bounded from the wall to the top of the refrigerator and then down to the floor, twenty feet closer to us in less than two seconds. Along with the muffled clap from the gun’s silencer, the spider flipped onto its back, leaking blood by the gallons and squirting web silk by whatever you used to measure web silk. Bundles? Haystacks? A whole shitload of it. If you took every one of Spider-Man’s wet dreams, added them together, then multiplied by ten, that was what you’d get. Not that I wanted anything to do with Spider-Man’s wet dreams, but for measurement purposes, that was about right.